


Relentless

by Cielestine_de_Winter



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, BAMF Q, Bond Returns, F/M, Kidnapped Q, M/M, Moneypenny ships OOQ, Q is no damsel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:19:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5217695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cielestine_de_Winter/pseuds/Cielestine_de_Winter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James's life with Madeleine is lovely.  Until a text from M put things in perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relentless

Life with Madeleine was lovely. There were breathtaking sunsets and sensual nights. There were halcyon days filled with bright sunshine, long walks, and longer comfortable silences. Madeleine was smart and beautiful. James filled her days with breakfasts in bed, expert massages, and gourmet dinners. He teased out her interests and wrapped them around himself, making a place for himself in her life. It was… lovely.

James had just made dinner, a multicourse feast with sumptuous wine pairings and Madeleine’s favorite cake for dessert. He dried his hands on the kitchen towel and went in search of her. He found her in their bedroom clutching something in her lap.

“James!” she looked up and flushed. Her eyes shifted just slightly.

James felt his gut tighten unpleasantly. “Dinner’s ready,” he said with a smile.

Madeleine plastered a fake smile on her lips. “I’ll be there shortly.”

James nodded and went back to the dining room, forcing himself not to react to her suspicious behavior.

Madeleine joined him a few moments later, slightly pale and nervous. “This looks lovely, James.”

Dinner was lovely. Sex afterward was lovely. As James spent another sleepless night staring at the ceiling listening to her breathe, he reflected on how lucky he was to have stumbled into such a lovely life.

 

The next day James and Madeleine were going out to a local farmer’s market. James searched his bedside table looking for his phone and couldn’t find it. An unsettling premonition swept over him stilling his heart for a moment. He pushed it aside and used the landline to call his cell. He followed the ringing to Madeleine’s dresser.

“You’re happy, aren’t you James?” Madeleine asked from the doorway. “You’re happy with me.”

James disconnected the landline and turned to her.

“We’ve made a lovely life together here,” Madeleine continued, her eyes filling with tears.

The premonition was back. James opened her dresser drawer and pulled out his cell phone from behind her sweaters.

“James, please.” Tears ran down Madeleine’s face freely.

James glanced away from her and unlocked his phone. There was one new text message from the night before.

_Q has been taken._

 

James walked confidently into the new MI6 wearing a navy blue pinstripe bespoke suit 3 hours later. His arrival was like the coming of the tide, around him eyes widened and whispered calls were made. James was very quickly escorted to M’s new office.

“Hello, Bond,” M said cautiously. “Then you got my text?”

“A little late,” James acknowledged. “What do we know?”

Very little, it seemed.

Q had been taken on his way home the day before. M had forced him to go home after the boffin had been working 72 hours without a break. Q, being the difficult person he was, refused a car and had taken the tube. Just as he was leaving the station, he was accosted by three men who dragged him into a van and took off. The van was found across town stripped and set on fire.

“… and whereas Q’s a genius when it comes to finding facial matches, there seems to be no one in Q-branch similarly gifted.” M sighed looking haggard.

“Demands?” James inquired.

M shook his head. “None. Nor do I expect any. The quartermaster in an invaluable asset to 6. Anyone would want him. I would have called in the other double-ohs, but I need our best resources on this. I need you.”

James gave him a ghost of a smile.

“Moneypenny will take you to Q-branch. Given the present staff’s inexperience, I have Tanner down there now.” M took a breath. “Please bring him back, James.”

Moneypenny was waiting for him on the other side of the door. “Took you long enough,” Moneypenny sniffed as she led him through the new office. “I was worried you weren’t going to come.”

“But I did,” James said sharply. “How have things been?”

“Things haven’t been… good for Q these last few months,” Moneypenny said softly. “When 6 was closed down, he placed many of his staff in solid, well paying positions elsewhere. After M convinced the higher up to reopen 6, the majority of Q’s staff didn’t return. He does most of the branch work by himself now.”

James glanced at her, not letting his disapproval show. “Surely there was someone who could help him?”

Moneypenny sighed. “There was, for a time. Man by the name of Randle Graves. Randle took on the mantle of R for a short while until he assaulted the quartermaster.”

James stopped walking. “What?”

Moneypenny’s expressive eyes were bleak. “Randle fancied Q a little more than what was appropriate. Randle would say things, but you know Q, he’s not always the most astute when it comes to himself. One night Randle made a pass at Q and when Q turned him down, he got violent. Fortunately OO6 had just gotten in and was able to stop Randle. As it was Q was in medical for a week.”

“And no one thought to call me?” James said through his clenched jaw.

Moneypenny looked at him with a small frown. “You were gone, living your life away from us. We didn’t think you’d care.”

James turned away from her and started walking again. Moneypenny quickly followed him. “And where is Graves now?”

“We don’t know.”

James’s head whipped around and he glared at her murderously. “What?”

“There was so much to do,” Moneypenny stammered. “We thought…”

“You thought you would let Q’s would be rapist flitter around free?” James grabbed his phone and quickly dialed OO6’s number.

Alec Trevelyan answered it on the first ring. “James?”

“Q gets assaulted and you didn’t go after the man who attacked him?” James demanded.

There was a pause. “I was more worried about Q bleeding out on the floor. That filth pulled a knife on Q and had slashed him pretty badly.”

James felt the walls of the new offices close in around him. “I wonder if we could meet for drinks,” he said in a more measured tone.

“You’re in London, then?” Alec asked.

“I am.”

“Are you going to find the bastard?”

“Yes, after I find Q.”

“Where’s Q?”

“He’s been kidnapped.”

“I’ll be there in 5 minutes.” Alec disconnected.

James turned to Moneypenny. “Is there anything else I should know?”

 

What made James the best wasn’t that he could kill a person in many creative ways or that he could finesse information out of marks as easily as he could breathe, although he was a master at both these things. No, what made James the best was that he was relentless in solving whatever puzzle was put before him.

Relentless.

2 hours after he arrived at the new offices of 6, James setup a home base in Q’s personal lab and with Alec Trevelyan’s, OO6, and Eric Earnhart’s, OO9, help he systematically tracked down every lead they had in relation to not only Q’s kidnapping, but also Randle Graves’s whereabouts. James worked with Tanner’s team of forensic experts to examine every millimeter of the burnt out van. He viewed the grainy CCTV tapes of Q’s kidnapping, then went back and cross checked Q’s comings and goings from 6 with the CCTV tapes of his commute.

What he learned made him sick with concern.

According to MI6 logs, the Quartermaster used to go home almost every day. Then his trips home became more and more infrequent and his stays there became much shorter. Further investigation unearthed a police report deeply buried in Q’s desk of a break in that resulted in both of his cats being brutally killed with one of Q’s kitchen knives. The perpetrator was never found.

It happened, interestingly enough, soon after Graves started working in Q-Branch.

When James asked Moneypenny about it, she was surprised. She hadn’t known. Neither had Tanner.

They had been busy.

James swallowed his rage and continued searching.

 

5 hours into the search, James finally put all the puzzle pieces together and came up with an address. M, Tanner, and Moneypenny wanted to go. They had failed the quartermaster in the most crushing of ways and they feared they would never had a chance to make things right. James refused to let sentimentality put Q in any more danger and elected to deploy himself, Alec, and Eric, the three most deadly double ohs in the program.

The address was about 2 hours outside of London near a quiet farming village. James helped himself to one of Q’s shiny new Aston Martins while Eric and Alec elected to take a more practical SUV. Unsure of what to expect, they were armed for war. Tanner and M used satellite feeds to watch the little farmhouse with an almost manic vigilance and provided comm support.

About 50 minutes away from the address, Tanner and M reported a terrific explosion at the house. The trees and bushes around the house caught on fire making a beacon impossible to ignore. Fearing the worst, James pushed the car to its limit, leaving Alec and Eric in the dust.

James pulled up the drive and climbed out of the car, staring in horror. The fire burnt so violently that it hurt James’s eyes.

“OO7?”

James turned away from the roar of the fire, to where he had thought he had heard his name.

Standing not 20 feet from him was Q.

Q was wearing only the button down shirt he had worn the day he was kidnapped. It was filthy with blood and dirt. Q’s pale skin was bloodied and bruised. Q stood unsteadily just staring at James as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

James started running to him, but hit the ground when shots rang out. He saw Q go down with a loud cry. James quickly crawled over to him.

“Are you hit?” James demanded, willing the fire to burn brighter so he could see Q’s injuries.

“No,” Q gasped. “But my ankle’s broken.”

James glanced in the direction of the shots. “Right. We need to get you to the car.”

“Oh,” Q panted as James pulled him along. “So I’ll actually be in one of my cars when someone is shooting at me. Goodie.”

James smiled faintly and squeezed off a few rounds as more shots were fired at them. They almost made it to the car when two large men rushed them from two different directions with shotguns. James quickly killed one of them, but the other grabbed Q by his bad leg and pulled him up until he was a barrier between the man and James. The man threw away his shotgun and pointed a handgun to Q’s temple. “Throw your weapons down,” he snarled. “And move away from the car.”

“Do you really think that’s going to work, Graves?” Q huffed. “OO7 loves his cars. There’s no way he’ll let you just take one from him.”

Graves squeezed Q tightly, obviously aggravating some injury that Q hadn’t seen fit to tell James about. “Call me R!” he shouted into Q’s ear as he started dragging him to the car while giving James a wide berth.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” Q snapped. He twisted his body and James could hear something snap over the noise of the fire. Q went down hard leaving Graves exposed.

James shot Graves in the head then ran over to Q. “Q?” he called frantically.

Q gingerly pushed himself up, holding his middle. “Help me to the car, OO7. If I have to be in agony, I want to be in agony on soft, heated leather seats.”

“Of course, Quartermaster,” James said with a full smile gracing his lips.

 

James sat in the visitor’s chair next to Q’s bed thinking. Staring at the pale features of Q, he realized that the gentle feeling of fondness that he had for Madeleine couldn’t compare to the maelstrom of emotion he felt for the man he only knew as Q. If the situation was worse, if something terrible had happened to Q…

James took a few deep breaths and pulled his thoughts away from what could have been. Q had promptly passed out as soon as James buckled him in. Eric and Alec pulled up minutes later and did a sweep of the property to make sure no one else was hiding as James drove Q back to 6.

Q’s injuries were serious but thankfully not life threatening. A broken ankle, a few broken ribs, some interesting knife work on his chest, deep lacerations around his wrists where he obviously twisted his wrists bloody in order to escape, and lots of bad bruising all over his body. James knew from experience that Q would be in agony for several days to come.

Q jolted awake then hissed in pain.

“I’m glad you’re finally back with us,” James said once Q’s breathing got under control. He studied Q’s pale features.

“I wish I could say the same about you,” Q said looking around the room. “But you’re probably just here for the car.” He tried to sit up, but James got to his feet and put a hand on his chest.

“Lie still,” James soothed. “Do you want water?”

“Please,” Q said nodding his head and closing his eyes.

“What happened?” James asked bringing the cup of cool water to Q’s lips.

Q drank greedily. “Old friend wanted to discuss old times with me,” Q said lying back and closing his eyes.

“Randle Graves?” James sat back down, grinding his molars. He was not going to let Q hide in sarcasm. Not this time.

Q nodded his head. “It’s nothing, really. You should probably take off before I get out of bed. I’m duty bound to keep you from helping yourself to another car.”

It hurt a little that Q was being so dismissive of him. “I can spend a few more minutes here,” he said mildly. “Tell me what happened. The full story.”

Q refused to open his eyes. “Graves was an employee here for a time. He did passible work and I was pressed for resources, so I made him R. One night he and I had a slight disagreement that Alec had to break up and he disappeared.”

“He tried to rape you.”

Q tensed. “It seems you already know the story.”

“I only know what others have told me. I want to hear it from you, only I don’t need it sugarcoated.”

Q was quiet for a time. “He pulled a knife on me hoping that I would meekly go along with whatever he wanted, but meek isn’t really in my nature and we fought. He got me a few times before Alec came in a broke us up. Then he just fell off the map. I was in medical for a few days and when I got out there were endless missions to run and weapons to design and test. I didn’t follow up on him. I was hoping that Alec had scared him off.

“But it seems Graves was more stupid than I had imagined,” Q sighed. “He and some goons he was paying picked me up on my way home the other night. I had just come off a long shift and was a little tired, so I didn’t react as quickly as I should have. They knocked me out and when I awoke I was tethered to a pole in a barn.”

“Did he hurt you?” James asked softly.

Q laughed bitterly. “No. But not for lack of effort. He wanted to hear my voice so he wouldn’t gag me. Unfortunately for him that meant that I was free to prattle on at length about his shortcomings.”

“I’m sure he didn’t take well to that.”

“No, hence the broken ankle and the marks I probably have on my chest because of his knife. But, if you’re mad enough to abduct a person, you should have the moral fortitude not to burst into tears when they say something you don’t like.”

“Did you really make him cry?”

Q smiled bitterly, his eyes still closed. “Yes. The bastard admitted to breaking into my flat and killing my cats. Of course I made him cry. Anyways, the idiots elected to leave me alone in a working barn, so I slipped my tether and tinkered with some of the chemicals I found. You’d be amazed what you can find in a barn. I was taking my exit when I found you. You know the rest.”

There was a long silence. James studied Q, wishing he could just lean over and touch the younger man. Confirm for himself that his quartermaster was safe again. “I was thinking of staying,” James said finally. “Living with Madeleine was… lovely, but not really real. More like a long, boring dream.”

“Hmmm. Sounds dreadful,” Q mocked.

“Besides, you are obviously incapable of taking care of yourself and need someone to mind you.”

Q’s eyes opened and he turned to James. “I think given the circumstances, I was doing okay. The walk back to London would have been a bit not good, but I would have made it.”

James stood next to Q’s bed and ran his fingers lightly over the small patch of skin on Q’s arm. “That wasn’t the bit I was referring to.” At Q’s shiver James brought his other hand up and pushed Q’s unruly hair out of his face and traced his cheekbone with his thumb. “You’ve been working yourself into the ground.”

Q’s eyes dilated as they remained affixed to James’s. “I was very busy,” Q whispered as James’s fingers traced his ear, then his jawline. “And I am not a mark."

James smiled, the caressed Q’s plush lower lip with his thumb. “No, you certainly are not a mark but I would like to get to know you better.”

Q closed his eyes and turned his face away. “You would be better served by just stealing the car. You don’t have to go through all this to get what you want.”

James nudged Q’s face so that they were facing each other again. “I came back for you.”

“You came back for the job.”

“But what I want is you.”

“You don’t know what you want.”

“Then let’s try this and see where it takes us.”

Suddenly the door burst open and Moneypenny started walking in. She took one look at how James was standing and smiled brilliantly. “Well finally!”

Q shook off James hands. “I’m not even going to dignify that with a response. Moneypenny, Commander Bond was just leaving. Can you please see him out?”

Moneypenny’s smile dimmed and she threw James an annoyed glare. “Come on, James. You heard the quartermaster.”

James considered just sitting back down in the chair just to see what Q would do, but he reconsidered. Being stubborn would not win him Q’s heart. “Of course,” He leaned down and kissed Q’s cheek. “I’ll see you later, Q.” he whispered, feeling the shiver that ran through Q. He smiled and followed Moneypenny out the door.

They walked through the mostly empty corridors of 6 without speaking. When they got to the front door she turned to him. “He has a weakness for toffees and good red wines. If you mess this up I will castrate you with my heels and give him your balls as a gift. Do we understand each other?”

James’s smile didn’t falter. “Yes.”

“Then you have a meeting tomorrow with M at 8:00. Please try not to be too late.” James’s smile grew and he turned to leave. “Oh, and Tanner asked that I give you these,” she said holding out a set of flat keys. “He texted you the address. Welcome back James.”


End file.
